Cop Car's Beat

More from Slashdot.org - a bonus from COVID-19

The following posting is from Slashdot.org.

Long-Lost US Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator (npr.org) 69

Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 24, 2020 @08:40PM from the lost-and-found dept.

Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in Canada, found a "zombie" military satellite that was supposed to shut down in 1972. NPR reports: Recently, Tilley got interested in a communications satellite he thought might still be alive -- or at least among the living dead. LES-5, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, was launched in 1967. Tilley was inspired by another amateur who in 2016 had found LES-1, an earlier satellite built by the same lab. What was intriguing to him about LES-5 was that if it was still working, it might be the oldest functioning satellite still in geostationary orbit. By scouring the Internet, he found a paper describing the radio frequency that LES-5, an experimental military UHF communications satellite, should be operating on -- if it was still alive. So he decided to have a look.

"This required the building of an antenna, erecting a new structure to support it. Pre-amps, filters, stuff that takes time to gather and put all together," he says. "When you have a family and a busy business, you don't really have a lot of time for that," he says. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic. British Columbia, where Tilley lives, was on lockdown. Like many of us, suddenly Tilley had time on his hands. He used it to look for LES-5, and on March 24, he hit the ham radio equivalent of pay dirt. While Tilley thinks it may be possible to send commands to the satellite, the MIT lab that built LES-5 didn't comment on the matter when NPR inquired.

 

For more information, go to NPR's posting and/or a Riddles in the Sky posting.

One more time I was faked out.

Having watched the miniature swing that hangs from the ceiling of our front porch for a new nest built by house finches and seeing none, I gave up a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, Hunky Husband has told me of seeing an adult house finch in the swing on occasion. However, I still saw no nest - just a few assorted pieces of western cedar mulch. Today, I happened to glance up through the window that is above our front door and note two gaping mouths and hairy heads. New babies! The adults had built a nest that was so low that it wasn't visible from my height (or lack thereof). In addition, I noted that Mama Bluebird seems to be feeding babies, regardless of the fact that (atypically) we had been unable to determine that the bluebirds were nesting in our nesting box, this year.

I must become more observant!

And, just because it is still so pretty, another photo (below) of the Prairie Pink dogwood tree. The blossoms are nearly red when they first open, but fad out to pink as they age.

Come here!

Each weekday at about 4:30pm, Hunky Husband appears at my door (I am in my den, reading) to announce that he is going up the street to fetch our mail. "Okay", I say. Today, he had barely gotten out the door to the garage, through which he normally traverses, when he came back inside to say, "Come here!" I quickly changed to my driving glasses, slipped into some slides, and went out to see what was happening. Below are photos of what I saw.

After I came back inside, a couple of the neighbors saw HH out there with the turtle, thought that the turtle was heading across the street to the pond, and decided that they did not wish to have such a large turtle in the pond. They talked HH into letting them load the turtle into our garden cart and took it back into our woods to let it loose near the creek.

I'm hoping that the neighbor did not injure the turtle when he scooped it up with a shovel to put it into the cart - or - when he dumped the turtle back out of the cart. I should have stayed outside a bit longer to supervise, I guess.

Someone who knows about such critters might be kind enough to identify the above turtle. My guess is that it is a common box turtle. If so, the more usual size that I've seen is shown in the photo, below, of Dudette with a box turtle in 1963

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ADDITION OF 4/21/2020 - Snapping Turtle

I think that Stu's suggestion of our reptile's being a snapping turtle has much merit - attested to by size and by the size/shape of its bottom shell. The photo, below is from Wikipedia.

Below is a closeup of our critter's head.

MEV-1

For the first time, a spacecraft has returned an aging satellite to service

It’s a big step forward for satellite servicing.

Eric Berger - 4/17/2020, 8:21 AM

 

In a triumph for the nascent industry of "satellite servicing," an aging communications satellite has returned to service in geostationary orbit.

Northrop Grumman announced Friday that its Mission Extension Vehicle-1, or MEV-1, has restored the Intelsat 901 satellite and relocated it into a position to resume operations.

....

For more of the story and a great video, please click on the above title that is linked to the Ars Technica article.

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Disclosure: Each month I draw a pension check from Northrop Grumman. They know nothing of my blog and/or postings so no endorsement of any sort is implied.

These made me laugh.

Today's being Wonderful Granddaughter's birthday, and WGD's being a nurse, I sent her the cartoon, below. (I don't recall where I had found it.)

ADDITION OF 4/18/2020 - An advertisement worth watching (from SNL)

Dogwood Saga

April 5, 2018, I had a Prairie Pink dogwood tree planted just on the inner edge of our woods. Dogwoods are an understory tree, so it seemed the perfect spot. And it was. Except: That year, we had a record cold spell of 18 degrees Fahrenheit the night of April 6, 2018. Great timing on my part. (Actually, I had purchased the tree a few weeks earlier, in March, and the nursery got around to planting it in April.)

On April 6, 2018, I wrapped the tree up to protect it - Readying for freeze. It did well, pulling through the freeze, beautifully - Effects of the Freeze. However, the tree all but died in the winter. When the nursery guy came out to plant the Texas Whitebud tree in April 2019, he examined the dogwood tree and its one little blossom, and pronounced that the nursery would replace the tree. They did - in May 2019. This spring was to be the replacement tree's first year to bloom, here. I'll let you judge from the photos, below, how well it has done.

Although Hunky Husband thinks me a nut for planting gingko and walnut trees, as I shan't be around when they grow large enough to be significant, he doesn't make fun of my planting trees that blossom, shortly. In fact, he has listened to my glowing remarks about how much I enjoy observing the blooming dogwood that he has given me "permission" to plant more small, flowering trees - well away from the house; but, he said he would be willing to mow around them if I gave him ample room. For several years, now, I've pursued the goal of taking out trees that are near the house and planting trees further away - fire considerations.

Facial Coverings

Although, as it turned out, I was overly ambitious in setting forth on the New Project of making facial coverings for Wonderful GrandDaughter's staff, in light of my aches and pains (there's a reason it takes me at least a year to make a quilt!), I have managed to get a few made. We'll drop them off on WGD's front porch, about 15 miles from us, one day this week. The coverings in the center are turned over to show the backing fabrics that were used in most of the coverings. I'm hoping that WGD had a much more numerous response from the quilt guild to which I referred her.

The coverings look small; but, the pleats unfurl quite nicely. The twelfth covering that I've made, the one that I use myself, is not shown but is similar to the coverings that are in the right column in the above photo. Any further coverings will, of necessity, be of a different style - ones that tie, rather than having elastic. I've run out of the elastic (which was a tad wider than it is best to use, but it is what was available). I'm searching the house for something akin to clothesline cording to use as the ties. If (as I think to be the case) I have none, I'll have to sew a 55" tie for each covering.

More from Slashdot.org - a great lunar and/or a great COVID-19 project?

NASA Contemplates Turning a Moon Crater Into a Giant, Powerful Telescope (cnet.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday April 09, 2020 @03:00AM from the decisions-decisions dept.

NASA has selected a lunar-crater radio telescope idea to receive funding through its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency announced on Tuesday. The Phase I award goes to projects in very early stages of development. CNET reports: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the mind behind the moon dream. Making it happen would require sending robots to the far side of the moon and using the machines to deploy a wire mesh over a crater. Bandyopadhyay's proposal lists the benefits of locating a telescope on the far side of the moon, including that "the moon acts as a physical shield that isolates the lunar-surface telescope from radio interferences/noises from Earth-based sources, ionosphere, Earth-orbiting satellites, and sun's radio-noise during the lunar night."

The moon telescope project is one of 23 concepts that received part of a $7 million investment through NIAC. The Phase I award consists of $125,000 to fund a nine-month study of the idea. Other concepts include investigating solar sails, lunar landing pads and a robotic explorer for Saturn's moon Enceladus. NASA pointed out that these projects will mostly require a decade or more of technology development, and that they are not official NASA missions

 

70 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development, 3 Candidates Already Undergoing Human Trials (theprint.in) 3

Posted by msmash on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:10PM from the moving-forward dept.

There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, with three candidates already being tested in human trials, according to the World Health Organization, as drugmakers race to find a cure for the deadly pathogen. From a report: The furthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine developed by Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, which is in phase 2. The other two being tested in humans are treatments developed separately by U.S. drugmakers Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, according to a WHO document. Progress is occurring at unprecedented speed in developing vaccines as the infectious pathogen looks unlikely to be stamped out through containment measures alone. The drug industry is hoping to compress the time it takes to get a vaccine to market -- usually about 10 to 15 years -- to within the next year.

Walk like an Egyptian

I thought that the video, below, was so well done that I just had to post it. Credit Murr Brewster of Murrmurrs with bringing the video to my attention by posting it on her blog. Murr laments that she wants to see a woodcock. It is one (of hundreds/thousands) species that is missing from my life list of birds. The video runs 51 seconds.

 

In watching the above video, I found the video of a family of woodcocks in Canada. Particularly, starting at 1:23 in this 2-minute video, the chicks are really cute.

 

In turn, I was led to this 46-second woodcock dance set to "Tequila".

 

 

That's all, Folks!

Treadmill away!

This morning, I prevailed upon Hunky Husband to help me put together the treadmill that he had given me - mostly where I needed real muscle or a third hand. The box had arrived last Monday, but I let it stew for a few days to give the viruses time to disassemble.

The first photo, below, shows HH at about 10-15 minutes into our assembly of the treadmill.

After 30 minutes:

After an hour:

Fortunately for him, I was able to let HH go take his nap after 40-45 minutes. Now come the hard parts of getting the tension squared away on the belt so that it doesn't move laterally and figuring out the electronics that track time/distance/heart rate. That will have to wait for another day. I must get outside to water the newer trees in the yard. I will be pooped, then, from hauling 150' of hose out and back and re-coiling it.